Introduction

This is the NCERT Class 11 Economics (Indian Economic Development) chapter on poverty — one of the most challenging issues facing India, alongside rural development and building infrastructure. In the earlier chapters you studied the economic policies India followed over more than six decades and their outcomes for various developmental indicators. Providing minimum basic needs to the people and the reduction of poverty have been among the major aims of independent India. The pattern of development that the successive five year plans envisaged laid emphasis on the upliftment of the poorest of the poor (Antyodaya), integrating the poor into the mainstream, and achieving a minimum standard of living for all.

While addressing the Constituent Assembly in 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru said that Independence "is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the great triumphs and achievements that await us… the ending of poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of opportunity." Yet we need to know where we stand today. Poverty is not only a challenge for India — more than one-fifth of the world's poor live in India alone — but also for the world, where about 300 million people are not able to meet their basic needs.

Poverty has many faces, which change from place to place and across time, and it has been described in many ways. Most often, poverty is a situation that people want to escape. So poverty is a call to action — for the poor and the wealthy alike — to change the world so that many more may have enough to eat, adequate shelter, access to education and health, protection from violence, and a voice in what happens in their communities. To know what helps reduce poverty — what works, what does not, what changes over time — poverty has to be defined, measured and studied, and even experienced. As poverty has many dimensions, it has to be looked at through a variety of indicators: levels of income and consumption, social indicators, and indicators of vulnerability to risks and of socio-political access.

After studying this chapter you should be able to understand the various attributes of poverty, comprehend its diverse dimensions, critically appreciate the way poverty is estimated, and assess the existing poverty-alleviation programmes.